A grand, grand opening line...

Subject: A grand, grand opening line...
From: "Andrew T. Brooke" <abrooke -at- pathcom -dot- com>
To: "TECHWR-L" <techwr-l -at- lists -dot- raycomm -dot- com>
Date: Sun, 22 Sep 2002 22:31:30 -0400


I used to work at a place where the doc standard was to have the first
sentence in the manual be:

Welcome to the <name of product> <name of document>.

Examples:

Welcome to the Schmaltzherring API Guide.
-or-
Welcome to the Imsoferklempt User Manual.

<product names changed to expose the guilty>

I'll be setting up some new docs in a new job, and am not sure if I should
borrow this "standard". I can't decide if this is:

A) The smelliest opening line ever for a doc, resulting in both laughter
and/or sickness.
B) A nice, gentle way to guide the reader (primarily a developer) into the
great work they are about to enter.

What sayeth thee, my dear tech writing brothers and sisters? Novelists know
that the first line of a novel is the hardest. Well, this ain't a novel, but
a good opening line can't hurt.

Got any good opening lines? Send them in now - operators are standing
by.....

;-)

Andrew




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